


The Love Song of Fen'Harel

by GypsySisters



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Poetry, Solavellan, poem, solavellan hell, t s elliott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 09:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7634233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GypsySisters/pseuds/GypsySisters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A re-imagining of the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Love Song of Fen'Harel

Let us go then, you and I,  
When the evening is spread out against the sky  
Like sacred ashes in a burnt out temple;  
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,  
The muttering retreats  
Of restless nights in tents across the realm  
And sawdust taverns with watered down ale:  
Quests that follow like a tedious argument  
Of insidious intent  
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...  
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”  
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go  
Talking of Skyhold and its hero.

The fade fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,  
The green smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,  
Licked its tongue into the corners of her evening,  
Lingered upon the Inquisitor as she walks through dreams,  
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from memories,  
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,  
And seeing that it was a soft Parvulis night,  
Curled once about the tower, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time  
For the green smoke that slides along her mind,  
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;  
There will be time, there will be time  
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;  
There will be time to murder and create,  
And time for all the works and days of hands  
That lift and drop a question on your plate;  
Time for you and time for me,  
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,  
And for a hundred visions and revisions,  
Before the taking of dreadful morning tea.

In the room the women come and go  
Talking of Solas and his fresco.

And indeed there will be time  
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”  
Time to turn back and descend the stair,  
With a bald head where once I had hair —  
(They would have said: “How his hair is growing thin!”)  
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,  
My armor rich and modest, but asserted by a broken grin —  
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)  
Do I dare  
Disturb the universe?  
In one minute there was time  
For decisions and revisions it would take my lifetime to reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:  
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,  
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;  
I know the voices dying with a dying fall  
Behind the mirror from a farther room.  
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—  
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,  
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,  
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,  
Then how should I begin  
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?  
And how should I presume?

And I have known her lips already, known her all—  
Lips that are plush and bright and bare  
(But in the mountain light, soft, too soft to bear!)  
Is it the memory of her kiss  
That makes me so digress?  
A kiss that’s born across a dream, or summons me like a thrall.  
And should I then presume?  
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow dreams  
And watched the smoke that rises from the minds  
Of lonely men in fitful sleep, crying out for reprieve? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws  
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!  
Smoothed by long fingers,  
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,  
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.  
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,  
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?  
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,  
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,  
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;  
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,  
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,  
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,  
After the long walk, the sweet talk, removing the vallaslin,  
Among the woods and water, among some talk of you and me,  
Would it have been worth while,  
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,  
To have squeezed the universe into a ball  
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,  
To say: “I am Corypheus, come from the dead,  
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—  
If one, shattering an eluvian by her head  
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;  
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,  
Would it have been worth while,  
After Haven and Adamant and Halamshiral  
After losing Wisdom, the Champion of Kirkwall, and the Templar order—  
All this, and so much more?—  
It is impossible to say just what I mean!  
But as if a magic mirror threw the nerves in patterns in a dream:  
Would it have been worth while  
If one, setting right a rift or throwing off a shroud,  
And casting back the Veil, should say:  
“That is not it at all,  
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not divine, not just, nor was meant to be;  
Am an attendant lord, one that will do  
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,  
Advise the herald; no doubt, an easy tool,  
Deferential, glad to be of use,  
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;  
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;  
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—  
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...  
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I leave my orb behind? Do I dare to drift asleep?  
I shall wrap myself is sadness, and walk from dream to dream.  
I have heard the spirits singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding dreamward on the Fade  
Combing the wild hair of the Inquisitor blown back  
When the Fade blows her dreams white and black.  
The elder ones will linger in the chambers of old demons  
By dragons wreathed in dreams both desperate and profound  
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


End file.
